Fact-check: Illegal immigrants and crime
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- June
- 24
A group of people held a press conference in Brewster yesterday to call attention to crimes committed by illegal immigrants and to demand that something be done to enforce the immigration laws.
“While crime is crime and the victims suffer equally whether the perpetrator is a citizen or illegal alien, what makes illegal alien crime so different is that the crime would have never happened if our government was doing its constitutionally mandated duty and enforcing immigration laws,” Ed Kowalski said in a press release from 9/11 Families for a Secure America. “This unequal enforcement of the law also makes it much more difficult on the victim’s families.”
Terry Corcoran has a story in today’s Journal News about the event. In essence, the message was that illegal immigrants are an inherent threat because their identities cannot truly be known. And illegal immigrants are by definition contemptuous of the law, the message goes. “Every illegal is a person who has shown contempt for American law, and every employer of illegals is a co-conspirator in any crime perpetrated by an illegal alien,” Kowalski said in his statement.
“Tomorrow’s terrorist is today’s cab driver,” Peter Gadiel said.
Here I’ll look a couple of statistics mentioned at the press conference, suggesting that illegal immigrants commit more crime than other people. The numbers came from Michael Cutler, who said he’d worked in a number of roles at U.S. immigration agencies.
The first claim: “About 30 percent of the inmate population are identified as being illegal aliens.”
Assemblyman Greg Ball has also made this claim in reference to New York state prisons. The actual percentage of inmates who are identified as illegal aliens in New York is 4 percent, according to state corrections officials. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, about 6 percent of state and federal inmates are non-U.S. citizens – a group that would include both legal and illegal immigrants. This 2005 report gives further details and percentages. For example, noncitizens accounted for 19 percent of federal inmates. Those federal inmates accounted for just 8 percent of the combined state/federal prison population. Here is the 2007 report, though you have to do the math yourself.
Statistics coming from local jails are not as complete. Eighty-four percent of jails track the numbers of noncitizen inmates, and based on that data, noncitizens accounted for 8 percent of the U.S. jail population in 2007, according to BJS. Again, the 8 percent would include both legal and illegal immigrants.
The “30 percent” figure has been widely circulated, and it comes from a 2005 GAO report that said 27 percent of federal inmates were “criminal aliens.” Again, this is just the federal prison population, and a “criminal alien” can be a legal or illegal immigrant. (In the jargon, a criminal alien is a noncitizen who has been charged with a crime.)
The second claim: “What this really means is that Illegal aliens are about five times as likely to commit a felony as are U.S. citizens and resident aliens.”
Cutler said this calculation is based on the 30 percent figure and the widely accepted estimate that 12 million people in the country are illegal immigrants. Demographer Jeffrey Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center estimates the unauthorized population at 12 million, or 4 percent of the nation’s population.
There have been a number of studies on immigrants and crime. The Public Policy Institute of California examined the incarceration data as a measure of whether immigrants commit more crime than other people. In a 2008 report (click here for the PDF), it found that immigrants are much less likely to be incarcerated than others. It’s difficult to break out the undocumented population, the report said, but it’s possible to compare foreign-born and native-born prisoners with similar education levels and ages.
Because immigrants tend to be young, male and less educated, there would be reason to expect a higher level of criminal activity, not a lower one, the report says. But the foreign-born accounted for 35 percent of California’s adult population and 17 percent of the adult prison population.
The institute looked further: Could the lower incarceration rates be explained by deportation? What about the jail population, which isn’t counted in the prison data? What if you look at only recently-arrived immigrants, or the ones who have accumulated more years here? What if you look at crime rates in individual cities where immigrants are going? What about the children of immigrants? What if you look only at the ones with less than a high school diploma?
The conclusion was that “the foreign-born have low rates of incarceration and institutionalizations, and that these rates hold true across education and region-of-origin subgroups.” The report ends, “In particular, from a public safety standpoint, there would be little reason to further limit immigration, to favor entry by high-skilled immigrants, or to increase penalties against criminal immigrants.”
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 2:35 pm by Leah Rae.
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Thank you for a bit of sanity and reason in this debate that tends toward the fearful and paranoid (not to mention racist). While I do believe that the US needs to reform the immigration system, I do not believe the problems lie with the immigrants themselves, by and large. Most of them are good, honest, hard working people who are here simply to earn what we all want for ourselves: a better life. Of course, there are a few bad apples among them, as well as some who make some tragic mistakes, but how does that differ from the population born in this country? To paint a whole group with a broad stroke just because of their country of origin is simply wrong.
The tragedy in Brewster could just as easily have been the result of Town Supervisor Michael Rights driving while intoxicated as it was an immigrant, illegal or otherwise.
This is a awful , they are people too.!
I understand people don’t like illegal’s but don’t blame them for everything that goes on in the world. poeple should
learn to get along no matter what race , religion , etc.
Why don’t you actually do some research on the FACT that Brewster CRIME has risen in the past 10-15 yrs most of which has ILLEGALS committing the crimes! I don’t care what California does with illegals, I WANT THEM OUT OF BREWSTER. How many murders, stabbings, drug deals, and so on have ILLEGALS been accused of in Brewster and the surrounding areas in the past 15 yrs compared to the prior the the 15 yrs? Or how bout do some research on how much UNTAXED American dollars are sent out of this country by ILLEGALS? How bout 4.5 billion just last year. Also maybe you want to research how many jobs can be created if ILLEGALS were forced out of their ILLEGAL jobs?
Thank you for setting the record straight on many of the hysterical claims being thrown about for all the wrong reasons. It’s about TIME that someone published this information!!!
Fact: These people are “illegally” here. That is against the law. Whether they are hard-working or not, if they want to live and work in this country and have their children attend schools on America’s tax dollars, they MUST DO IT the right way, not illegally!
hear about the Mexican who won 2nd prize in a beauty contest? A German Shepard’s shaved butt hole won first prize
Another brainless lib writing for the Journal news. As usual taking the side of the illegal aliens while thumbing her nose at us. Illegal aliens commit a crime every second they are here by being here illegally. Attn Mtn Spring Illegal means illegal no matter if youre from Guatemala , Mexico, Ireland or Russia. DONT spew your moronic lines of racism
[...] via Fact-check: Illegal immigrants and crime | Beyond Borders. [...]
While many if not most illegal aliens are decent people and are only illegally in the United States to provide for themselves or their families – an action that does not justify breaking the immigration laws of the United States – all of them are not decent and many are responsible for shocking crimes and incredible damage to families all across the America.
Most everybody remembers the tragedy in New Jersey where illegal aliens wantonly killed three students and seriously injured another. A few people even remember that Jamiel Shaw was gunned down by an illegal alien gang member. However, very few people remember or even know that four year old Esmeralda Nava was kidnapped, molested, and strangled to death by an illegal alien child predator. The perpetrator that killed little Esmeralda told police that he carried the girl with one arm and muffled Esmerelda’s cries for her daddy with his other hand ‘’until she stopped moving.’’ Almost nobody knows that the illegal alien sexual pervert that used and abused little Esmeralda Nava had been previously deported.
Who remembers Min Soon Chang, an eighteen year old freshman at the University of North Carolina who was killed by a drunk driving illegal alien? In that case the perpetrator had at least three prior DWI convictions and had been previously DEPORTED 17 times. That is not a typo.
Who besides her family even know, let alone remember, that Danielle Gorectke, a vivacious 23 year old student at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point was raped and beaten to death by an illegal alien?
Each one of these tragedies devastated an American family.
Each one of these tragedies was totally preventable if the perpetrator was not illegally residing in the United States.
Excluding breaking the immigration laws of the United States and committing ID theft and fraud, do illegal aliens commit more crime than legal immigrants? Probably, but nobody really knows. Do illegal aliens commit more crime than citizens? Most likely, but nobody really knows.
What we do know is that the Justice Department does not report crimes committed by foreign nationals, illegal aliens, or even Hispanics (about 80% of illegal aliens are Hispanic.). Interestingly, the DOJ does, however, report crimes committed against Hispanics, including illegal alien Hispanics, but will not distinguish if the perpetrator was Hispanic themselves. (Crimes committed by Hispanics, including illegal alien Hispanics, go into the “Caucasian” category as “Hispanic” is an ethnicity, not a race.)
While no crime is ever justified and racially motivated crimes are particularly onerous in a civilized society, the reporting is a one way street supporting the common perception that “illegal aliens are just good family values people that are here to do the work Americans won’t.” When the government does not report crimes committed by illegal aliens, who are mostly Hispanic, but does report “hate crimes” committed against Hispanics it further distorts perceptions.
The blood of these innocents and many more are on the hands of the Open-Borders extremists—the Raza mouthpieces, the immigration lawyers, the journalists who crank out sob stories about lawbreakers. They work to overthrow our system of law and borders for their own selfish reasons, while the number of dead killed by illegal aliens continues to mount. Yet the Open-Borders enablers act like they are on the side of virtue. Why is that?
The Open Borders side is guilty of more crimes than treason. They must be held to account
Ed Kowalski
9/11 Families For A Secure America
leave to a liberal publication to do this. Perhaps a story about all of those who have been murdered, raped, mained by illegal immigrants. Fact-check this, on September 11th 2001, upwards of 3000 Americans were murdered by illegal immigrants. How’s that for a fact check!!
just another way to minimize , the real problem..and it is a problem
WOW …the journal news did some research. But their reasearch is useless. Illegal Immigrants are Illegal!
That is only a part of the story involving government tracking of statistics. There is a complex relationship between #’s of arrests, #’s of crimes, and the differential impact different groups may have had on the streets.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-01-29-ms13_N.htm
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mac_donald04-13-05.htm
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/gangunit/about/usgangs.html
One day you will eat your words, one day it will be your family, friend, or neighbor… lets see how you feel when you have been in the ER by your murdered sister killed by an illegal Leah. HOW ABOUT THAT FACT LEAH!!!
Pulling the shades down before our eyes, nice try.
“Fact-check this, on September 11th 2001, upwards of 3000 Americans were murdered by illegal immigrants. How’s that for a fact check!!”
I think all of the hijackers had visas and were in the country legally, with many of the Saudis here thanks to our Visa Express program.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Express
Are foreign nationals responsible for more crimes than Americans? Why should I believe that? I’d think that if I were in a country illegally, I’d want to keep my profile as low as possible, and that’d mean staying out of trouble. Earn some money to send back home to my family and squeak out a living here. I don’t think they really came here with the intent to commit crime.
I submit that we take more notice because their “names stand out more” to our American ears. And everyone is ready to lump anyone with a Hispanic name immediately into the “illegal” category. Anyway, we’ve got plenty of home grown nutjobs (like Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, Jeffrey Dahmer, David Berkowitz, and Richard Ramirez to name just a few.)
For all you idiot libs out there how do you know these statistics are true? Look at the source. The rag JN has done it again with their liberal view point. Even if the stats were true that’s 6% to many more criminals. Maybe
if that 6% lived right next to these poor misgiuded liberals
they would sing a different tune. What a joke.
The majority of those that left comments here are racists, plain and simple, just read over what you wrote and think about it. Do you realize that people just like yourselves said the same exact bullshit about any new immigrant population that came into the US? The Irish, the Italians, and lets not forget about African americans! How many of YOUR ancestors came here illegally? Do you even know? Probably not. Stop pointing the finger at the wrong people! Point it at the corporations who hire cheap labor and outsource to other countries leaving us americans without decent paying jobs! Stop blaming the little guy…they don’t have any power! Blame those that actually have power, they’re the ones that are ripping you off time and time again. Your money goes to fund wars to make rich people richer. That’s what you should be pissed about. Not people of south american origin who come here for opportunity! come on! grow up! Read your history! I recommend “The people’s history of the United States” by Howard Zinn. Maybe you’ll actually learn something.
Michelle you are just another person who likes to play the
race card. It’s getting old and no one cares anymore so find another way to back someone into a corner. Wanting our
laws enforced in this country is not racist. All illegal
aliens should be deported regardless of race. The immigrants of 100 years ago came here legally and went through a tough screening process and assimilated and
became part of the system. The illegal aliens of today
slithered under a fence in the middle of the night bringing
all kinds of disease and liability. They don’t pay taxes,
crowd ER rooms and over burden our schools. There’s a big
difference. Wake the F’ck up!!!!
Not identifying E-Verify as the perfect tool to extract illegal immigrants from the workplace, doesn’t wash with the American worker anymore? The once great US Chamber of Commerce, compliant with the ACLU, and other anti-sovereignty factions, have pushed our soft politicians to null E-Verify. Sen. Harry Reid(D-NV), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have lost a great deal of public loyalty, because between them, they manufactured excuses to undermine any new law that enforced our weak immigration laws? Chief of Homeland Security is Napolitano who joined the other pathetic Senators, to stealthily direct ICE not to implement large immigration raids anymore. This has also been noticed by the public audience in the months since inheriting the office from Chertoff. By no means are these the legislators who are stating they are supporting E-Verify, or any other immigration law, but in actual fact voting against it.
Their attitude shows up distinctly when they keep voting E-Verify being delayed for Federal contractors who of all people should be using it. It displays their complete apathetic when politicians allow 300.000 illegal workers, making use of Stimulus money in the construction industry. The 1986 Immigration Act has never been enforced, it has always been fully jeopardized and now the politicians want to replace it, by enacting another AMNESTY. Amendments to the 1986 Simpson/Mazzoli bill is all that’s required to add strength, to our border security and internal enforcement.
Even any new health care for the American people is compromised by the illegal alien pestilence, because a great portion of the uninsured in our nation are these people heading in large numbers to emergency hospitals. In the decades since Europe saw the ingress of illegal immigrants into their countries, they have seen medical care sink in the quality of service, including rationing. Here in America health care has also been disparaged by added forced mandated laws, that illegal people must be attended to, for even the common cold-
which becomes yet another financial impediment to the legal population. It’s just sheer madness on the part of the open border globalists, to keep feeding the country with millions of cheap labor. The burden for these services has never been financially appropriated from the businesses that employ foreign labor, butALWAYS-from the US taxpayer.We have been brain-washed by the media and government that there are only 11 million illegal people who have violated our laws, whoever this is far from the truth. We can not afford for another AMNESTY to succeed, and must fight back tooth and nail? It’s enactment would terrify the most conservative of financial analysts, of even larger obligation on every taxpayer. Of all the immigration tools at our disposal, we must not let our government exempt E-Verify from our ordinance. It should mandated in every human resources office that-
ALL ERRORS- can be reconciled, after being hired at the Social Security agencies.President Obama has adamantly promised illegal aliens who knew the consequences of violating our border, a path to citizenship. Sorry! But the costs of this travesty cannot be even imagined. This is absolutely “Taxation without Representation” for like many laws that quietly fall upon the American taxpayer it is ethically wrong. Just addressing the OVERPOPULATION concept should be enough for-
THE PEOPLE-to bombard your Senators and Congressman. Facts, statistics at NUMBERSUSA.100% of all illegal immigrants in the United States are criminals. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT. Care to comment, Lisa Rae?
Leah doesn’t comment she just put’s this trash out.
Dear Bull sh*t, sorry I mean Bulldog, Its not a matter of playing the race card like you conservative spinsters love to throw out there, its called having compassion for other human life. Maybe if you could stop listening to rush Limbaugh for a moment and get some news from some other more balanced sources you would see that their country has been devastated by our policies or free trade and corporate fat cats exploiting the country for all it is worth. Most Latin Americans that cross our borders illegally do so because the path to do so legally is very lengthy and expensive and many of them are in dyer need of money, food, and/or medical attention. To file just the initial application it will cost $95, which is very difficult for someone who is already poor. Now I don’t know about you, but I would do anything to help and better my family situation (especially if my family situation is due the the greedy corporate country to the north that will start wars, destroy villages, and air raid local crops just to make an extra buck for there political contributors) Now I am not denying that it is wrong for people to come here illegally, and that is part of the risk I’m sure they are aware of in coming here, but to create such a hatred against people is wrong, and yes racist (such as your comment about illegals slithering under fences, how derogatory can you get). In every group there are bad seeds, whether American, Mexican, Black, or Chinese, but to create a stereotype that all these people are bad, and to blame them for many of our problems is very reminiscent of Nazi Germany (Hitler loved to use Jews and gypsies as scape goats). My heart truly goes out to those who have lost love ones from any persons mis-deeds, I myself lost 2 very close friends in a tragic drunks driving accident, and of course the drunk lived and the law dealt with him, oh and by the way, he was a white man. There are about a thousand times more tax dollars (billions year over year and ever increasing) wasted on weapons and funding and training political groups to over throw governments in other countries, take Iraq and Saddam Husein for instance (we armed and funded his group to take over the country then turned against him when he was no longer useful to us), and look where that got us. Why aren’t you mad about that, probably because that money goes towards killing little brown people and you don’t care about them.
Dear American i’m not conservative or hateful. There’s not
enough room here to debate this issue but anyone who justifies criminal activity is plain wrong.
every wetback in this country should be brought back in cages
[...] are illegal aliens. We fact-checked that claim on the state level here and at the national level here. (The actual percentage is 6 percent if you include all noncitizens, whether legally or illegally [...]